


Call and the Saint of Killers

by the_rogue_bitch



Category: Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years, Preacher
Genre: Call bumbles his way through feels what are those, Call goes to a murder, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Meddling Angels, Pre-Series, grim grimy Call goes to a funeral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rogue_bitch/pseuds/the_rogue_bitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He, whose hate froze over Hell, feels his hatred being challenged across time. Someone out there hates as much as he does and it cannot be allowed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call and the Saint of Killers

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 1999 or 2000, when I was in my very first fandom. After nearly 15 years(!), I can finally look at the batch of fic and not feel sad about certain events related to the show, and read them on their own merits. I can also revise the fics using the 15 years of writing experience I've garnered since then. The website I used to archive the LD fic is still up, it was called [Twyla's](http://web.archive.org/web/20010527030522/www.roguebitch.org/twylas/page2.html). It was last updated in 2001, when I was still married and still had a married last name. 
> 
> Mega special thanks to [tryxchange](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tryxchange) for being willing to read these over, offer critique, and coming up with an EPIC tag.

Somewhere in the world, a person dies violently. In this place, the Saint of Killers is present with the person holding the gun, the knife, the blunt instrument. He directs the hands around the victim’s neck. 

In the unsettled West, he is more present than God. His shade is everywhere that vicious death occurs. His demonically-reconstructed body sleeps under Boot Hill, a rattlesnake on the lid of his coffin, awaiting God's call to duty.

But something disturbs his slumber. He, whose hate froze over Hell, feels his hatred being challenged across time. Someone out there hates as much as he does and it cannot be allowed.

The lid of the coffin creaks open and the Saint steps out. Glancing around the slipstream of time, he picks a direction and goes.

***

Call sensed the blow as it was coming, but didn't duck in time. The side of his face exploded with pain and he tasted blood in his mouth. Enraged, he turned and slammed his fist into his assailant's face. Again. And again. A red mist obscured his vision and a berserker's rage drove him until he was pulled off the man and hurled into the street.

"Jesus, Call! You bout killed that man!" Silas exclaimed as he helped Call to his feet.

Call glared at his erstwhile riding companion, fists still clenched, and seething at being interrupted.

"He hit me first," he said, and spat blood into the dust.

"Don't matter, Call! That don't give you the right to beat him near to death."

Call stood and stalked to the town's livery without reply. He saddled up the Hellbitch and rode out of town, glancing neither left nor right. How many towns had it been since he had left one particular town? How long had it been? How many outlaws brought in or killed, none of them able to erase his rage at his basic uselessness?

Call despised himself. No amount of bounty hunting could banish it because no amount of bounty hunting could ever bring her back. He had a pure, white-hot hatred that burned the humanity right out of him and made him a machine for justice. If he couldn't have her with him, he could at least rid the world of other criminals. If he couldn’t be with her and create meaning in his life that way, he could at least create space in the world for other people to do so by ridding it of other killers.

If he did it long enough, maybe he could expiate his own guilt.

Only in sleep was Call unsafe, when dreams of remembered happiness would overwhelm him, tempt him with the remembrance of loving and being loved in return. 

Waking to the cold reality of his isolation was worse than living with the memories every day.

Call didn't sleep much.

He made camp around sunset, waiting for Silas to catch up. He tended to the Hellbitch and ate dinner. The sound of a horse trotting reached his ears and he leaned against his saddle, watching alertly, gun concealed at his side. He didn’t relax until Silas rode into the circle of firelight.

"Sometimes," Silas said, dismounting, "I think you don't want to ride with me at all."

Call grinned humorlessly. "Shouldn't let what I do reflect on you."

"It ain't your reflection on me that's the problem. Hell, in some places, it's a benefit. I can't tell you how many whores have asked me what it's like to ride with you. I can get a poke for the price of a story," Silas unsaddled his horse. "It's when you decide to beat drunks nearly to death and ride off, leaving me to explain, that I have a problem with it. I ain't your keeper."

"Don't recall ever asking you to be."

Silas rooted around in a saddlebag and came up with a bottle of whiskey. He took a pull off it, recorked it, and tossed it to Call. "Wild animals never do. You know, being your friend's like trying to tame a timberwolf? Never know if you're gonna bite my hand off or not." 

"I'm not anyone's friend," Call muttered, leaning against his saddle. His knuckles were sore from punching and the side of his face hurt. He shoved the pain to a distant corner of his awareness. He was adept at it by now. His consciousness was so ringed with deferred pain he carried it like a reverse halo, limning him in darkness. Only his self-hate was incandescent. It was what made people stay away from him. It was what made him so good at his vocation.

Call felt unsettled, tracking senses alerted to disturbances nobody else seemed to detect. Something was coming.

***

There were disconcerting rumors of massacres. Call heard whispers in the little cow towns he and Silas passed through. Whenever they stopped in a saloon there was always a little knot of cowboys or farmers muttering about it.

Silas, being the approachable type, would go over and talk to the grouped men. Call, being the hostile type, would have to wait until Silas was done and they were out of the saloon to hear the same story.

A lone gunman. A dead shot. Positively ruthless. If you drew on him, you died. Even if you didn’t, your survival wasn’t assured. 

At least it wasn’t Indians. Call had few scruples, but he didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that the murder of settlers was the work of Indians. He’d seen too many truly murderous white people to think that Indians were automatically blameworthy. 

"There any bounty on him yet?" Call asked.

"Not yet, but it's only a matter of time. We can check at the next town."

"Something about this don't feel right." 

“Well, why?" asked Silas.

"Nothing was stolen, was it?"

Silas shook his head.

"No claim-jumping, no land grabs?"

Again Silas shook his head.

"It just don't make sense," Call said. "But if there's a bounty on him, you can bet I'll catch the son of a bitch."

***

The dreams came. A whispered word, the smell of violets. His name, a drawn out sigh, "Newt." A sense of well-being, of rightness with the world. 

"Hannah," Call said clearly, waking himself up.

He stared unseeing at the night sky, allowing himself one second of self-pity before the hate iced it over again. 

_Worthless,_ he thought. _Why am I alive and not her? She deserved the best of everything. I couldn’t even save her. I am nothing. I am a dead man walking around in this body. All I need to do is fall down and never move again._

A litany of accusation and anger spun in his head. Call relived every shattered moment from the time the general store exploded to the present. He only stopped when the the horizon lightened with the coming day and Silas stirred.

"We'll find out what we need to know at the next town," Call said with a certainty even he didn’t know the source of. He did not answer Silas' questioning look, but went about saddling the Hellbitch.

***

Call and Silas rode into a town as quiet as the grave. They hitched their horses to the post in front of the saloon and went in.

"Where is everyone?" Silas asked the barkeep, after ordering a whiskey.

"Funeral." the man said shortly. "Whole family was killed just outside of town. The Winigers. Two teenage sons, one daughter."

"Parents, too?" Silas looked horrified and fascinated. The man nodded.

"They know who it was?" Call's voice cut across the air.

"No, but we figure as it's the same fella been killing all over the territory. We called in the Marshals after the Winigers was shot."

"Where's their homestead?" asked Silas. The barkeep told them.

They stayed for another half hour to finish their drinks.

"You go on and get a room,” Call said to Silas when they left the saloon. “I'm gonna head out to the Winiger's and look around."

"Okay, but don't ride out after anyone without me, hear?" Silas replied, obviously planning a foray into the local sporting club.

"I hear," Call swung onto the Hellbitch and rode out. All day he'd felt a breathless anticipation, a nameless something pushing him onward. Now he felt compelled to follow this lead to its conclusion. The Hellbitch felt it too. She was tense and alert, responding to his commands instantly.

Call rode up to the Winiger’s homestead. The small house was utterly silent. The livestock had been taken in by a neighbor until they could be sold or given to the next-of-kin. Call dismounted and tethered the Hellbitch to the fence surrounding a paddock.

In the house it was equally as peaceful. No violence had disturbed this domestic scene. Call felt a tremor pass through him, the shadow of a memory of a home like this, but he squelched it quickly before it could really touch him.

He went through the house out the back, where a scene of horrendous carnage met his eyes. The dirt of the yard was churned up and muddy with blood. There were splashes of gore on the whitewashed wall of the house. Impassively, Call tracked the blood splatter with his eyes. They led to the barn.

He moved across the yard quietly and opened the door a crack.

"Been waiting on you, boy," came a sepulchral voice from deep in the shadows.

"Figured you might be," replied Call.

He swung the door open to reveal a ghostly pale man sitting on a haybale. He had a hawk nose, and squinting eyes looked out from under the brim of his hat. His skin was a sickly green-white, not the color of any living flesh. 

Call watched warily as the man got to his feet.

"You the man's been murdering all these folks?" Call asked.

"I am," the man asserted.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you kill them?"

"I was looking for you, boy, and I had to draw you out somehow."

Call was speechless. He'd encountered stone-cold killers, but none that struck him the way this stranger had. He contained not one shred of remorse and seemed devoid of all human feeling. Killing entire _families_ just to get Call’s attention? He felt another weight added to his burden of responsibility and despaired.

“Why were you looking for me?" Call asked. He didn't fear for his life, that was immaterial to him, but he still searched for a meaning to all this useless death. 

"Call it job security," the man said. "I got where I am through hate. This hate got me out of Hell. Come to my attention there's someone out there hates nearly as much as me and don't care if he dies, figure I ought to do something about it."

"You gonna kill me?" 

"Well now, that's the question, ain't it?" The man took a considering step towards Call, who held his ground. "I kill you, you die, go to Hell, maybe old Scratch finds out you're a better man for the job. Then again, I let you live, your hate keeps getting stronger, you die and go to Hell, you're still a better man for the job. Think I'll just kill you now."

"Way I heard it, you don't kill unless you're drawn on," Call replied.

"That ain't strictly true," the man said, and a gun appeared in his hand as if conjured there. "I'm allowed to make exceptions."

Call’s dormant instinct for self-preservation goaded him into action. He dove out of the way, behind a fortress of haybales.

"No use running, boy. These guns can't miss," Call watched numbly as one wall of haybales was shoved out of the way. No one with normal human strength could have moved so much weight.

The man advanced on Call. There was nowhere to go, no time. Call, mind blank except for a curious sense of gratitude, _he could stop fighting_ , stared up as his killer drew closer and closer.

"Go on. Get it over with." 

The man grinned sardonically and raised his guns, pulled the triggers and -- the hammers froze halfway to the chambers. The man looked down at his firearms, nonplussed.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" A voice as elemental as thunder and earthquakes boomed out.

Call looked over to its source and his jaw sagged open. 

A being of indescribable majesty stood there, holding a great sword. It was naked and sexless. Multiple wings mantled from its back in enormous feathered glory. It seemed to be composed completely of light, shifting and radiating so that Call had to squint against the brightness.

It was so immense that Call’s consciousness scrambled to make sense of it. 

"I ASKED, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

"Taking care of some business. If you'll kindly unfreeze my guns --" The man was unaffected by the being's presence.

"YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE. IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET. WERE YOU CALLED?"

Sullenly, the man replied, "No."

"YOUR FUNCTION IS NOT PERSONAL VENDETTAS. _I_ AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH IN THIS TIME. NOW, GO."

At that simple command, the man vanished. The Angel turned its gaze on Call, who could not bear to look directly at it. His head bowed, he watched it out of the corners of his eyes.

"YOU, MAN, NOW YOU KNOW THE PRICE OF YOUR FEELING. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD DO HIS JOB? DO YOU WANT IT?"

"No!" Call cried out, appalled.

"MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH THE DEAD AS THEY HAVE MADE THEIR PEACE WITH YOU. AND MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH THE LIVING. YOU ARE AMONG THEM."

The being turned away. 

“Wait!”

"WHAT?"

"Will I go to Hell?"

It paused.

"IF YOU CONTINUE ON YOUR PRESENT PATH, YOU VERY LIKELY WILL. BUT CHANGE IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE, AND HARD TO PREDICT."

"Hannah?" Call choked out.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK?" The Angel smiled enigmatically as it winked and vanished.

Call pulled himself to his feet and stood on trembling legs. He ran outside and, leaning over a fence rail, threw up. Then he started crying, great ugly sobs that felt like they were ripping his ribcage in half.

He didn't know how to feel. When the Angel had looked at him, all his hatred was held up to him as selfish and self-serving. The shell of grief and unfeeling he'd kept around him had broken and blown away under the Angel's gaze. He felt raw and burned.

"What do I do? What am I?" Call moaned. He felt like he had been living in Hell for a long time, but the Angel had shown him how wrong he was. He had to change if he wanted to see Hannah again. Hannah would not have wanted him to live this way. She wouldn’t like the person he’d become. She wouldn’t like being his justification for who he was now.

Call straightened up and rubbed his eyes as his breathing returned to normal. He went to the well, drew up a bucket of clear water and rinsed his face and mouth. He walked around to the front of the house, where the Hellbitch was tied. She looked spooked.

"Hey girl, it's all right, calm down," Call spoke quietly in soothing tones. When she settled, Call remounted and headed back to town. He noticed that his anger was gone. In its place was a sort of resolve he hadn't previously possessed. A gift of the Angel? Call thought not. There was only one gift that angel gave, and he didn't see fit to bestow it on Newt Call. 

It was more like perspective.

Call met up with Silas in the saloon.

"You find him?" Silas asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Call replied, downing a shot of whiskey.

"You didn't kill him, did you?"

"Did you see me come in with a body?"

"Then what happened to him?" Silas persisted.

"Let's just say he was abruptly called home." Call stated, and no amount of prying would get him to say more.

***

The sorrow and grief would always be there, but Call wouldn’t consume himself with hate, or berate himself for uselessness again. He saw where _that_ path could lead. He wanted no part of it. He was among the living, and he intended to stay there for his allotted span. He would find another way to make himself worthy of Hannah’s memory.


End file.
